Forgotten Film Friday: Reversal of Fortune

A review by Brooks Rich

This is one of the more prestigious films to be featured on Forgotten Film Friday. Reversal of Fortune is critically acclaimed and made some waves during award season. Jeremy Irons won an Academy Award for Best Actor, deservedly so, and the director also received a nomination. It is a fascinating legal drama presented in an unorthodox way

The film is based on the book by high profile Harvard law professor and defense attorney Alan Dershowitz, played by the immortal Ron Silver, about his defense of Claus von Bulow, who was convicted of murder after his wife, Sunny, slipped into a mysterious coma. Dershowitz is hired after von Bulow is granted a retrial. The odds are against him but he likes a challenge. So Dershowitz assembles a team of his law students and begins building a defense.

In most legal dramas and thrillers the action takes place in the courtroom, with showdowns between lawyers being the highlight of the film. Reversal of Fortune mainly focuses on Dershowitz building the case with his team, getting bits and pieces of what happened from von Bulow. He says in the film that a trial is won or lost before the case even goes to court. The building of the case for either side is the most important. There is no dramatic courtroom scene in this film, an interesting departure for the genre.

Sunny is played by Glenn Close and serves as the story's narrator. Close does an incredible job as always and we see her as the broken and substance abusing Sunny through flashbacks as Claus recalls the events that led up to the coma. The film offers no real answers either becuase in reality, no one really knows what happened.

The film is on HBO right now. It's worth a watch. Check it out if it somehow passed you by.

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